


Baby Birds and Rainbow Kisses

by Stoneheart



Category: Dangan Ronpa, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Despair, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 12:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stoneheart/pseuds/Stoneheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a tumblr AU prompt for "Chihiro as a literal actual princess!" </p><p>Pretty much what it says on the tin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby Birds and Rainbow Kisses

**Author's Note:**

> Combination non-despair AU with "What if Chihiro's 'secret' was something cute/separate from her gender identity?". (Though I guess "princess" could still very much be considered her identity...:))
> 
> Thanks to sharonaparadox for the wonderful prompt, and Vivi for the excellent suggestion of how to go about it!

It was rather roundabout, how Chihiro became the acting princess of Novoselic.

It all started when Sonia discovered her secret.  
  
Ever since Chihiro had been small, she hadn’t liked to change clothes in front of others. You see…no matter where she went, how obscure, how deep underground, how locked away it might be, they would find her.

The baby birds. The baby birds who liked to help her dress.

From the time in her past when she tried to dress the way she thought she was supposed to, to get seen as a boy, to the years when she insisted to herself and her parents that she wore so-called “girl clothes” to get everyone to leave her alone about her sickly body, not because “girl” was who that body belonged to – who she wanted, needed, people to see – to now, when she chose her clothing based on what made her feel the happiest with what she saw in the mirror, and expected people to see her as a girl no matter what, because that was just who she _was_ …through it all, the birds had been there. Alighting on her shoulders and pulling drapes of cloth from her closet, wings fluttering against her neck as they brushed her hair or helped unbutton her pajamas in the morning.

Chihiro loved her bird friends, but she also. Well, she also knew it was pretty weird, to have birds that found you and dressed you wherever you needed it, no matter where that might be. So she did her very best to only, only dress where nobody might stumble in on her.

So when, one night, another student at her school, the super high school level princess Sonia Nevermind, happened to try to use the changing room at the school pool at the same time as Chihiro, Chihiro was mortified. Sonia walked in when a bird was hovering in front of the door with Chihiro’s discarded dress, flapping around impatiently like, “hey, other birds, hurry up and zip up her wetsuit so you can help me fold this!”, and there was no time to disguise what was going on between when Sonia pushed open the door and when Chihiro noticed her there.

Chihiro tried to come up with some explanation, one that would keep Sonia from deciding she was too strange to associate with ever again, but all that ended up coming out of her mouth was a surprised squeak.

Sonia didn’t even react to the birds, though, not at first. She seemed more concerned that Chihiro was there at all.

"Fujisaki-san," she asked in her lightly accented, perpetually excited Japanese, "what are you doing here at this hour?"

Chihiro paled, realizing that going for a swim at 11 o’clock at night, when everyone who knew she existed knew she was hardly any kind of athlete, probably made her seem even _stranger_.

"U-um, it’s a surprise!" she stammered out. "I mean, for my friend. Her birthday. It’s soon, s-so I’m practicing my swimming every night until then so I can surprise her by challenging her to a race. It won’t be much of a contest, but I’m going to do my very best, because racing new people is her favorite thing…"

Sonia clasped her hands together in delight. “Oh, how wonderful! You mean Asahina, yes? I am not used to others using the pool this late at night, not since she started retiring early with Oogami on week nights, but I usually come to see if I can meet the water ghost that’s rumored to live down here.”

"Water…water GHOST?!?" Chihiro squawked.

"Yes, isn’t it exciting? But never mind the ghost for now: Fujisaki-san!! I had no idea you were a princess, too!! I’ve never had another princess as a friend, before!!"

Chihiro hated when she got like this, when her mind went all blank and light and all she could do was make choking noises and flop her hands around, but. This situation was too completely extremely far beyond anything she knew how to handle! Ghosts in the pool she was about to swim in, alone at night? A princess? Her? She didn’t even know where to _begin_!

Unwittingly, Sonia took pity on her by clarifying without any prompting. “Your birds, I mean!! In Novoselic, the being-clothed-by-birds ritual is one only women of the purest nobility can catalyze! The birds you’ve called to your side are quite beautiful, too; I am humbled to stand before you.”

Sonia fell gracefully into a low-sweeping bow, and Chihiro could feel herself going from cold to very, very hot.

Cheeks very red, she hurried to clear up this drastic misunderstanding. “Um, well, no, that’s not, I mean, um!! These birds started following me around when I was a child, after, after I nursed a vulture with a broken wing back to health, and well, I guess the vulture had, um, some smaller friends, but. It’s just this weird thing I thought happened only to me, it definitely isn’t because I’m any sort of princess or royalty! Please, _please_ stand back up, Sonia-san!”

Sonia did rise back to her full height, thank goodness, but the look on her face hadn’t gotten any less happily intense, and Chihiro felt her heartbeat pitter-pattering in her chest in tune to the sound of the wings fluttering above her head.

"That’s the most beautiful story I’ve ever heard," Sonia said, the edges of her smile creeping ever higher by the second. Sonia’s eyes suddenly got all shiny, too, and oh god, Chihiro was _freaking out_. “Most view vultures as filthy scavengers, dangerous and unwelcome birds of prey, but _you_ – !! A true princess, indeed!”

"I think vultures are scary too!!" Chihiro blurted out. She was embarrassed, but maybe this would help Sonia realize she wasn’t anyone so special. "I just can’t stand to see any living creature in pain, but I was afraid of it the whole time I helped sew up its wing!! See, I’m not princess-y at all…"

Unfortunately, Sonia’s expression only grew more terrible; Chihiro watched with a sense of horror as she _wiped away a tear_. “That humility! That honesty! That dedication to the life of all beings regardless of your own personal biases! Oh, Fujisaki-san! I didn’t know princesses like you even _existed_ , anymore! You’re like someone out of the storybooks! I, I –”

And just like that, Sonia Nevermind, Super High School Level Princess and person everyone in the _school_ seemed to look up to, swooned into Fujisaki Chihiro’s stunned, wetsuit-clad arms.

*

Anyway, after that, Chihiro didn’t _really_ accept the idea that her birds made her a princess, but she did wind up getting closer and closer with Sonia. That night, after Chihiro revived Sonia with a tentative pat on the cheek and let her wax poetic about Chihiro’s genteel specialness for a bit longer, Sonia had eventually offered to swim with Chihiro to protect “one of such noble blood” from the water ghost and/or Chihiro’s fears thereof, and she ended up accompanying Chihiro and helping her practice her front crawl for the rest of the nights leading up to Asahina’s birthday.

She was welcome company, and what’s more, the very next night Chihiro got to meet _Sonia’s_ baby birds, a beautiful set of turtle doves who knew how to tie a hair bow (Chihiro would have to see if her birds could do that trick) and bestow wetsuits upon their human friend, too. The fact that these birds did, in fact, exist, was a huge relief to Chihiro; it’s not that she thought Sonia was lying, but there was always the fear in the back of her mind that this was some joke Sonia was making that Chihiro simply wasn’t socially adept enough to pick up on, and Chihiro was still the only person in the world who had birds following her around for life.

Their birds started playing together, too, the more nights they spent in each other’s company, and Sonia’s birds were even the ones to brush out Chihiro’s hair after one night’s swim…and closer even than the birds got, grew Sonia and Chihiro.

Sonia had a lot of interests that scared Chihiro kind of a lot, but she also fiercely and decisively scared away anyone who made Chihiro scared (and Chihiro was a lot more scared of people trying to hurt her than she was of hearing someone as nice as Sonia gush, occasionally, about the occult). Also, she seemed to love animals every bit as much as Chihiro did, and they often went on long walks through the woods together, marveling at all the fauna that came by to greet them both. And to Chihiro’s shock, Sonia was deeply interested in learning everything Chihiro could teach her about computer programming, and in exchange, she taught her a little Novoseli each day, insisting that if Chihiro could learn so many computer languages, it would be no time at all before she was fluent in as many spoken languages as Sonia herself.

It turned out she was right, at least as far as Chihiro’s Novoseli fluency went, and before long the two of them were having long, intimate conversations in Sonia’s native tongue whenever the urge struck. It felt like having a secret between them, these long-winded conversations only the two of them could understand, and there was something about knowing Sonia was the only one listening that made Chihiro feel freer, somehow, more able to say what she truly meant without stuttering, and occasionally, express feelings she wasn’t even sure she was allowed to be _having_ , but which Sonia always, always received with easy enthusiasm and eager reciprocity.

The comfort of their relationship was such that, on the day Sonia invited Chihiro to come live with her after graduation, Chihiro actually realized she’d been hoping for it, _expecting_ it, even, with this tentative, trusting warmth she hadn’t ever allowed herself to believe in - let alone believe in with regards to how someone felt about _her -_ ever before in her life.

Chihiro said yes.

*

And then, a few months after Chihiro had settled into her quarters and position in the Novoselic palace, Sonia proposed. Sonia proposed as if the two of them being the public leaders of an entire country was the most natural thing in the world. Sonia proposed as if she couldn’t imagine anybody else standing at her side, as if she’d known Chihiro was the only co-princess she could ever want from that first night in the pool, as if she, herself, was a baby bird, who wanted to go wherever Chihiro went, no matter where that was, and maybe play with her hair some or kiss her on the lips along the way. (Okay, Chihiro was glad her birds had never tried _that_. They were just her friends! Sonia was…Sonia was…)

Sonia was Chihiro’s friend, and somewhere along the line she’d become her girlfriend, too, and Chihiro couldn’t remember a time when that seemed anything but right, and true, and all she could ever want for the rest of her life.

Chihiro said yes, again.

*

There were many, many birds at their wedding; it was almost as if their personal entourage had went and invited all their friends and relatives to take part in the festivities.

There was even a vulture family there, and Chihiro wondered if they were related to that vulture she had helped when she was just a child. She had grown so accustomed to scary and dangerous things through her girlfriend-now-wife’s preoccupation with the paranormal and the dangerous, though, that she didn’t even tremble when she saw them. She just greeted the vultures like they were any other type of guest, and patted them on their vulture heads, and felt this sweet feeling swell up inside her, like since knowing Sonia, maybe she didn’t have to be afraid of anything anymore.

She was feeling so daring, in that moment, that she rushed up to her bride and kissed her square on the lips, something she was too timid to do during the ceremony and which Sonia assured her wasn’t necessary if she didn’t feel comfortable – but she did now, so she kissed her, in front of all the birds, in front of all the Novoseli populace, in front of all her family members and friends and classmates who had flown from Japan just to come to her wedding.

She kissed her long and deep and Sonia kissed back, and Chihiro could swear she saw a rainbow slanting through the utterly clear and rain-free sky above them, and in that moment, it didn’t seem so improbable that maybe, maybe, she was a princess, after all.

*

And that was how Fujisaki Chihiro became the acting princess of Novoselic. 

Birds, and swimming pools, and Sonia Nevermind, leading up to one absolutely fairytale-perfect kiss, and a space to live as the princess that she’d been all along.


End file.
